Sord in Prosperity - Hope Beyond the Apocalypse

EP. 135 - COLT

I WONDERED HOW TO cover this with you. It's about another significant childhood event centered on the death of a loved one. I don't mean to over-emphasize the impact of death in my life, as I like to think that living and conscious awareness defines me, not death.

For me, death was simply a fact from early on, a harsh, instant, and usually unanticipated reminder that life is finite. This may continue to be true for you, though I assume lifespans are greatly extended by the day's technologies.

Speaking of which, we are in the early 2020s and on the cusp of finding a cure for aging, a time when nearly all of humanity considers aging as a resolute fact of life and not a disease.

I don't. Aging is a disease indeed, and it is relative among living things. Aging should not limit us. For us at this time, however, it is involuntary.

Now in my sixties, I'm doing things in an attempt to slow its inevitable advance. Running. Eating well. Eating less, including intermittent fasting. And yes, I just began taking the few substances that researchers are finding the body creates to force it into a 'repair' state.

These researchers have thus far uncovered that the body has roughly two states of existence with regard to its internal systems messaging. It's either in a growth state or a repair state.

In growth, the body focuses internal energies on growing, on strength, or even weight gain. Growth is a consumption-based activity. Conversely in repair, it focuses on repairing. The body assumes it has encountered some stressors when in repair mode. It releases various substances to improve endurance and resistance to infection, remedying cellular and subcellular damage, and generally cleaning up and fixing injuries in anticipation of presumed additional stresses to follow.

These are the early findings. As a result, I have begun taking a few substances that the body produces naturally to activate this repair system. Setting aside personal hopes and aspirations from the equation, I estimate we are a decade from discovering treatments that substantially suspend aging, or at least allow humans to derive another decade or two of fruitful life. In two or three decades, given all the genetic and age engineering tech in progress, we may also have treatments that reverse aging as well.

Utterly unaware of the looming effect of this new science, humanity is far from prepared for the impacts of such technology. The implications are so extensive, I can hardly keep from writing a book solely on the topic. Anti-aging, reverse aging, age enhancements – whatever the term, this is just one of the many new advancements likely to unravel the fragile state of human societies in the early decades of this century.

To be certain, dramatically slowing or stopping aging sounds like a great deal. We might all soon live to whatever age we want, or maybe even shift gears and put the human aging vehicle in reverse.

But what of existing disparities in wealth? What of wealthy people who could easily envision the possibility of creating an eternal heaven on Earth for themselves?

Wouldn't they do anything, and I mean anything, to gather all the necessary resources to live their lives of opulence and satiation perennially? Would they not batten-down the hatches in their massive compounds or island havens and protect themselves for centuries from the otherwise seething torrent of human disharmony beyond their compound walls?

Similarly, wouldn't the more fortunate among us get the best, most superior anti-aging tech, enabling them to live for eons, while others make do with minor gains, if that? Greed. Fear. Envy. Hubris. Entitlement. Pleasure. Indeed, long, repetitive experiences of constant pleasure. These corrupting human traits will become even more exaggerated as we approach the epically disruptive epoch of anti-aging.